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Community members say they just want MSD to treat them like they treated people in other neighborhoods.

If the Metropolitan Sewer District won't hide its planned 17-million gallon sewage storage basin underground, Smoketown residents are promising a political fight through "direct action" and litigation.

"We are preparing to insist on the design changes through direct action, political engagement, litigation, community education, protest and activism," the Smoketown Neighborhood Association, a lawyer, a minister and owner of a marketing firm told MSD in new letter made public Monday.

The letter said the group wants MSD officials to attend a community meeting on Wednesday and for the MSD board to pass a resolution for an at-grade storage basin at its meeting on Monday.

"Everybody has things they would rather do with their time than march on MSD or litigate over equal protection," said attorney Ben Carter, whose law office is in Smoketown. "But we feel we are at a critical moment."

The $45 million facility is already under construction, with a hole dug and blasted into the ground. It would likely need to go deeper to meet the residents' demands, said Carter, who on Monday published an article on the Broken Sidewalk website about a walk-out of Smoketown residents at a community meeting last week.

MSD designed a large, windowless, brick building sitting on top of the Logan Street 400 foot by 200 foot basin - only one of two of 11 proposed or newly built basins to get such an industrial treatment. However, residents have repeatedly asked MSD to hide nearly all the storage facility underground, allowing for a park-like setting, as MSD has planned at other basin locations.

The agency has faced charges of treating the low-income and minority neighborhood unfairly.

MSD spokesman Steve Tedder said MSD officials will attend the meeting. He said on Friday MSD had agreed to study the costs of redesigning the storage basin, which is a substantial part of an $850 million federal court required program to reduce sewage overflows into local waterways.

But he said MSD staff won't have its alternatives analysis done in time for Monday's board meeting.

Still, he said, "we're looking at all options."

He said he had no further comment on the demands, which also came from Stephen Kertis of Kertis Creative, a story-telling and marketing business located in Smoketown, and the Rev. F. Bruce Williams of Bates Memorial Baptist Church.

"That's a first step," said Randy Webber, president of the Smoketown Neighborhood Association. But he said there's a consensus in the community about what needs to happen, and he said the community was "serious" about pressing MSD to change its direction.

Reach reporter James Bruggers at (502) 582-4645 and at jbruggers@courier-journal.com.